2003

11 Apr Research

SUPERFLEX had been invited by NIFCA, a São Paolo-based foundation called Extra Arte and the Amazonian government to undertake a research residency based in the town of Maués. Maués is in the central Amazon and, with a population of around 20,000, is the capital of the region of the same name, but the 100km journey from Manaus, the nearest city (famous to Europeans for its opera house, as seen in Herzog’s ‘Fitzcarraldo’, but best known in Brazil as an economic ‘free-zone’, its huge industrial parks home to firms like Toshiba, Samsung, or Benetton and the banks of the Amazon piled high with shipping containers marked for Tokyo or Hamburg), is possible only by taking a small plane or spending 22 hours on a riverboat. Maués is known in Brazil as the home of guaraná, a fruit whose caffeine-packed seeds are a luxury health-food product in Europe but in Brazil form the basis of some the country’s most popular soft drinks.